“He promised to take her with him,” Owl picked up, a flash of excitement in her Threads—and on her face as she, unbidden, walked faster. “But only if she agreed to marry him.”

“Exactly.” Iseult forced a tight smile. The silver Threads had picked up speed too. “Trickster said, I will save you from this storm if you agree to marry me. I love you, you see. But Moon Mother only shook her head sadly, even as winds and rains raged around her. You love no one but yourself, she told him. And you will always be alone.”

Owl frowned as Iseult said those words, and for a brief moment, it was as if the collar were not there. Her Threads burned bright as a bonfire laced with silver. They pulsed, outward and upward. A firepot ripping loose.

Then the moment passed. The Threads shrank; the color dulled to its usual dampened shades.

Iseult said nothing. She simply held her breath and listened to the forest’s wintry silence. Felt for the silvery Threads, which were definitely coming faster now, and gaining ground too. But the lake was so near. That had to be Iseult’s and Owl’s salvation.

They had just moved past the alders when the landscape abruptly changed. Like reaching the edge of a farm during fallow season, one moment there was growth, the next there was nothing but fog.

As soon as Owl saw it, her excitement over the story shriveled away. She dug in her heels. “Bad.” She bared her teeth, hugged her swollen wrist to her chest, and when the weasel snarled at her to move, Owl snarled right back.

“No,” Iseult said, panic creeping into her voice. The Threads were closing in, and now was not the time for Owl to be difficult. “Look, Owl. It’s just water.” Iseult rushed toward the fog. Its edges roiled and moved like foam on the lip of a tide. She thrust in her hand.

And two breaths later came the pain. Harsh, insistent, fiery. Iseult stumbled backward.

“Bad,” Owl cried at her. “I told you, bad, bad, bad.”

Iseult’s hand felt like she’d dumped it into boiling water, and already, blisters puckered. Acid, she realized. Then fast on that thought’s heels came another: the lake must be inside this fog, and it was no ordinary lake.

It was the Solfatarra, famed across Cartorra for its waters filled with heat and acid. At one end was a hot spring, where the waters were pure enough to enter. At the other was a sulfur mine. Both had been marked upon the map, but Iseult had been too dense to put it all together. What a fool she was. Always a stupid, stupid fool.

Worse, more Threads now sped into her awareness, corrupted by avian shadows and headed this way.

Aeduan would reach Iseult and Owl even faster than the silver Threads.